Linguistic Gap Analysis
Linguistic Gap Analysis — Judges (English → Portuguese)
1. Purpose and Method
This analysis identifies (a) doctrine-load-bearing vocabulary gaps between the Judges source text and available Portuguese Bible-translation-tradition vocabulary, (b) semantic neighborhoods in Brazilian Portuguese religious vocabulary that are already “crowded” by rival traditions (popular Catholicism, Kardecist Spiritism, Candomblé/Umbanda, and — new to this curriculum — Latin American Liberation Theology and clinical/psychiatric register) and therefore need explicit fencing, (c) transliteration-vs-paraphrase decisions for Hebrew terms with no Romans-baseline precedent, and (d) a ranked list of this curriculum’s highest-risk ambiguities for Phase 2 review prioritization.
This document assumes and does not repeat the full term list already fixed in analysis/08_core_glossary.md and assets/bible_term_registry.json. It focuses on the reasoning behind those decisions, on residual gaps, and on newly surfaced risks that the glossary work exposed but did not fully resolve.
2. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
| Doctrine | Available Portuguese terms | Weaknesses in available vocabulary | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Cycle of Sin, Judgment, and Deliverance | pecado, ira do SENHOR se acendeu, entregou nas mãos de, clamaram, livrou/libertou | (1) “Julgamento”/“juízo” as abstract nouns for the oppression phase risk pulling the reader toward the culturally dominant “O Juízo Final” (Last Judgment) frame, collapsing a repeated historical, this-worldly disciplinary judgment into a final, eschatological one. (2) The noun “libertação” (liberation), while lexically correct for yasha/hoshia, is a loaded term in Brazil: it is the proper name of a major 20th-century Latin American Catholic movement, Teologia da Libertação, which frames “libertação” primarily as socio-political and economic emancipation. Judges’ cycle is not making that claim. | Use “livrou/libertou” (already fixed) for the verb in narrative contexts; when the abstract noun is needed pedagogically (“doctrine of deliverance”), prefer “livramento” over “libertação” where possible, and where “libertação” is unavoidable (e.g., “o libertador”), attach a teaching note distinguishing Judges’ covenantal-military rescue from both (a) final eschatological judgment and (b) the Liberation Theology socio-political program, without denigrating legitimate concern for the oppressed that Judges’ narratives (e.g., the concubine, Jabesh-gilead) do independently raise. |
| The Absence of a Righteous King | rei, reinar/dominar, não havia rei em Israel, cada um fazia o que era certo aos seus próprios olhos | Brazil has had no living monarchy in national memory; “rei” is lexically clear but culturally thin — it risks reading as inert historical trivia rather than an urgent moral-political diagnosis, unlike in cultures with living or recently living monarchies. | Anchor “rei” pedagogically to its functional referent (a righteous, God-appointed authority standard external to individual preference) rather than relying on the word alone to carry cultural weight; pair every occurrence of the “no king” refrain with the mirrored “right in his own eyes” refrain so the doctrine is carried by the moral-autonomy half of the pairing, which resonates strongly in contemporary Brazilian moral-relativism discourse even where monarchy does not. |
| God’s Grace through Flawed Deliverers | graça (baseline reuse), libertador (never Salvador), homem valoroso (ironic) | Risk that applying “graça” to God’s choice of flawed individuals could be heard, by readers formed in either (a) Tridentine-influenced Catholic “heroic virtue” hagiography or (b) Kardecism’s “most evolved spirit” chosen-guide framework, as implying the judges possessed elevated inner merit or spiritual advancement that qualified them. Judges is making the opposite claim. | Require an explicit teaching note at each flawed judge’s introduction (Ehud’s deception, Barak’s fear, Gideon’s later idolatry/polygamy, Jephthah’s rash vow, Samson’s repeated compromises) stating plainly that God’s use of a person is not an endorsement of, nor evidence of, elevated moral or spiritual status — directly countering both the hagiographic-merit and the evolved-spirit-guide readings in one motion. |
| Apostasy and Covenant Unfaithfulness | aliança, se prostituíram após, servir, abandonaram, outros deuses, Baal, Astarotes | ”Se prostituíram após,” while doctrinally correct and already fixed, risks being heard by a general audience as a condemnation of sexual immorality specifically, missing that the metaphor’s target is idolatrous covenant betrayal, of which literal cultic sexual ritual (common in Canaanite Baal worship) was only one expression. | Retain the fixed rendering (already mandated) but require the accompanying teaching note (already specified in the glossary) at every occurrence, not merely the first; the metaphor’s force depends on repetition, and diluting the note after the first use risks the moralistic-reduction drift. |
| The Spirit’s Empowering of Judges | Espírito do SENHOR, força, sinal | See Section 3 below — this is the single most crowded semantic neighborhood in the entire curriculum. The verbs used for the Spirit’s action (“clothed,” “came upon,” “rushed upon”) sit directly in vocabulary space shared with Kardecist mediumship trance and Candomblé/Umbanda incorporação. | A single, fixed, carefully chosen Portuguese verb-phrase (see Section 3) must be used for all three underlying Hebrew idioms, with a standing teaching note attached to the first occurrence in each judge’s narrative (3:10; 6:34; 11:29; 13:25; 14:6; 14:19; 15:14) rather than relying on lexical variety, which would multiply rather than reduce the collision surface. |
| Moral Decline and the Need for a Righteous King | se corrompiam (comparative), loucura vergonhosa, ídolos domésticos, cada um fazia o que era certo | ”Loucura” (madness) as the head noun in “loucura vergonhosa” risks a clinical/psychiatric reading in contemporary Portuguese, where “loucura” is common vocabulary for mental illness; the narrator’s intent (nevalah, 19:23-24) is a moral-theological verdict of outrage, not a clinical diagnosis, and using this term without care risks either stigmatizing mental illness or, conversely, softening the narrator’s condemnation into something dismissible as an aberration rather than a culpable moral choice. | Retain “loucura vergonhosa” as the glossary-fixed primary rendering for consistency with the existing registry entry, but require a teaching note at 19:23-24 and 20:6, 10 clarifying that the term names willful, culpable moral depravity, not a mental-health condition; where register allows, “ato abominável” may be used as a clarifying parallel phrase within surrounding narrative material (not to replace the fixed term, but to gloss it). |
3. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods
3.1 Missing Vocabulary (concepts Judges requires that the Romans baseline never needed)
Judges introduces an entire register — Old Testament theophany, holy war, tribal covenant polity, and vow-making — absent from Romans. The core glossary (08) has already supplied working renderings for all of these (Anjo do SENHOR, juiz/juízes, voto, cherem, qahal, etc.). The residual gap, rather than an absence of any Portuguese word at all, is that Portuguese Bible tradition supplies adequate but under-differentiated vocabulary for three distinct Hebrew idioms describing the Spirit’s action on a person:
| Hebrew idiom | Literal sense | Occurrences | Current PT rendering risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| וַתְּהִי עָלָיו רוּחַ יְהוָה (hayah al) | “the Spirit of the LORD was/came upon him” | 3:10; 11:29 | Neutral; lowest collision risk of the three. |
| וַיִּלְבַּשׁ (labash) | “the Spirit of the LORD clothed him” (lit. put him on as a garment) | 6:34 | HIGH collision risk: “vestiu-se”/“revestiu” for a spirit taking on a person as a garment closely parallels the Umbanda/Candomblé colloquial phrase “vestir o santo” (the entity “dressing” the medium) used for incorporação. |
| וַתִּצְלַח (tsalach) | “the Spirit of the LORD rushed/leaped upon him” | 14:6, 19; 15:14 | HIGH collision risk: sudden, forceful, involuntary onset closely parallels lay descriptions of mediumistic trance onset (“o santo baixou,” “a entidade tomou conta dele”) in both Kardecism and Afro-Brazilian traditions. |
There is no missing word here — Portuguese has ample vocabulary for all three images — but there is a missing fenced, standardized phrase. Left to translator discretion, three different verbs across three different judges’ narratives would multiply, rather than reduce, the number of possible Kardecist/Umbanda-adjacent readings. See Section 5, Rank #1.
Decision: Standardize all three Hebrew idioms to a single controlled Portuguese phrase — “o Espírito do SENHOR se manifestou com poder sobre [nome]” (the Spirit of the LORD manifested with power upon [name]) or, where the source verb is emphatic (labash, tsalach), “o Espírito do SENHOR tomou posse dele com poder” may be used ONLY with the mandatory accompanying teaching note (see Section 5, Rank #1) — never “vestiu-se de,” “baixou sobre,” or “incorporou,” all of which are directly avoided as functioning loanwords from Afro-Brazilian/Kardecist ritual vocabulary. Exact phrase selection is deferred to Phase 2 Step 16 translator-memory entry creation but MUST be locked as a single fixed formula before any Phase 2 segment touching 3:10, 6:34, 11:29, 13:25, 14:6, 14:19, or 15:14 is processed.
3.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Fencing
| Neighborhood | Colliding traditions | Why Judges intensifies the risk beyond the Romans baseline | Fencing strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit “coming upon” / “possession” vocabulary | Kardecism (mediumship trance), Candomblé/Umbanda (incorporação), Brazilian Pentecostal deliverance-ministry vocabulary (“possessão demoníaca”) | The Romans baseline addressed “Holy Spirit” as a noun-identity risk; Judges narrates the Spirit’s action verb repeatedly and dramatically (7 occurrences), especially in the highly cinematic Samson narrative, which is exactly the kind of vivid narrative detail that gets retold, dramatized, and remembered — multiplying exposure to the collision. | See 3.1 above: single fixed phrase, mandatory teaching note at every occurrence, explicit statement that this is sovereign divine initiative, never a ritual, medium, or invocation. |
| ”Santo” as the popular name for a possessing spirit-entity | Umbanda/Candomblé colloquial usage: “o santo desceu,” “vestir o santo,” where “santo” denotes the incorporated orixá/entity itself, not a canonized person | The Romans baseline flagged “santos” (believers) vs. canonized-saints veneration as Critical. Judges compounds this: in the very passages where the Spirit’s empowering is narrated, a Brazilian reader from an Afro-Brazilian religious background may hear “santo” not as “believer” (Romans’ concern) but as “the entity that possesses a medium” (a second, distinct collision unanticipated by the baseline). | Avoid the word “santo” entirely in any teaching material surrounding Spirit-empowerment narratives (chs. 3, 6, 11, 13-16); reserve “santo/santos” strictly for its baseline corporate-believer sense elsewhere in the curriculum, never adjacent to Spirit-empowerment vocabulary. |
| ”Baal” as a literal title (“lord,” “owner,” “master”) | Risk of etymological confusion with “Senhor,” the Critical-risk baseline title for YHWH/Christ | Judges names Baal dozens of times as a proper name in direct narrative proximity to “o SENHOR.” A reader who learns (correctly) that “Baal” literally means “lord” could momentarily conflate the false god’s title-sense with the true God’s title “Senhor,” especially in oral/teaching contexts where the etymology is explained. | Never translate or gloss “Baal” as “senhor” in running text; when the etymology is taught (useful for explaining Baal-Berith’s irony), explicitly state that this shared root is precisely why Scripture reserves capitalized “Senhor” exclusively for YHWH and warns Israel against every rival claimant to that title. |
| ”Voto” (vow) | Brazilian folk-Catholic votive-promise practice (promessas to saints/Nossa Senhora for favors received, e.g., pilgrimage vows, ex-votos) | Already flagged in the glossary; Jephthah’s tragic vow (ch. 11) is the sharpest test case, since Brazilian devotional culture has an entire visual and ritual vocabulary (ex-votos, salas de milagres) built around vow-fulfillment as pious practice. | Explicit teaching note required at 11:30-31, distinguishing Jephthah’s rash, law-ignorant vow (narrated as tragedy, not model) from any implied endorsement of vow-making as a devotional pattern. |
| ”Nazireu” / consecration vocabulary | Catholic “vida consagrada,” monastic vows of poverty/chastity/obedience | Already flagged; risk intensifies because Samson (the Nazirite in view) is also the central figure in the Spirit-empowerment collision above, creating a compound risk in chs. 13-16: readers could construct a syncretistic composite of “consecrated holy man + spirit-empowerment ritual” that resembles an Afro-Brazilian or folk-Catholic devotional figure more than the biblical text’s actual claim. | Teach Samson’s Nazirite status and his Spirit-empowerment as two textually distinct threads that the narrative itself separates (his hair was never magical; the Spirit’s empowerment was never contingent on ritual technique) — reinforcing, not undermining, the “strength” entry’s existing teaching note. |
| Ephod / teraphim / carved images | Brazilian popular Catholic devotional objects (medalhas, imagens, terços) and Afro-Brazilian ritual objects (guias, assentamentos) | Already flagged as Medium-High in the glossary; the risk is that a blanket condemnation of “idolatry” could be heard as condemning devotional objects as a category, alienating culturally Catholic learners unnecessarily, or could be under-applied if learners assume the critique only concerns exotic foreign religions. | Teaching note must specify: the text condemns self-made, self-directed substitutes for God’s prescribed worship, not devotional objects as such; application should invite reflection rather than issue a blanket verdict on any specific present-day practice. |
| ”Rei”/kingship | Weak neighborhood collision but genuine gap: no living monarchy in Brazilian civic memory | See doctrine matrix above (Absence of a Righteous King row). | See recommended strategy above. |
4. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
| Term | Decision | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Ruach YHWH (Spirit of the LORD) | Paraphrase — “Espírito do SENHOR” | Preserves direct doctrinal continuity with the baseline’s “Espírito Santo” (both must be taught as the same Person); transliterating “ruach” would sever this link and gain nothing. |
| Malakh YHWH (Angel of the LORD) | Paraphrase — “o Anjo do SENHOR” (capitalized) | A transliteration (“malakh”) would be opaque to a general Brazilian audience and lose the theophany signal that the capitalized, titled phrase conveys within Portuguese Bible tradition. |
| Shophet (judge) | Paraphrase — “juiz/juízes” | Established Portuguese Bible tradition already uses this term for the book’s title (Livro dos Juízes); transliteration is neither possible nor desirable. Teaching note required (already specified) to prevent modern-magistrate misreading. |
| Nazir (Nazirite) | Transliterate/adapt — “nazireu” | This is already a naturalized loanword within the Portuguese Bible tradition (cf. “nazireado” in some study Bibles); paraphrasing as “consagrado” would collide with monastic vocabulary (see Section 3.2) and lose the term’s specific, bounded OT institutional identity. |
| Ephod | Transliterate/adapt — “éfode” | Established loanword; paraphrasing as “vestimenta sacerdotal” would erase the specific object identity needed to track its legitimate (priestly, Exodus/Leviticus) vs. illegitimate (Gideon’s, Micah’s) uses across the book. |
| Teraphim | Paraphrase — “ídolos domésticos” | Unlike “éfode,” “terafins” has no meaningful foothold in general Portuguese Bible-reader vocabulary; a transliteration would be unrecognizable and require its own gloss anyway, so the descriptive paraphrase is more efficient and equally accurate. |
| Cherem (ban/devoted to destruction) | Paraphrase — “anátema / destruição total" | "Herém” transliterated would be wholly opaque; “anátema” already exists in Portuguese Bible/theological vocabulary (cf. Pauline usage) and correctly signals total, binding consecration-through-destruction, requiring only contextual narrowing rather than invention. |
| Baal / Baalim | Transliterate — “Baal / Baalins” | Proper name; must NOT be translated by its literal meaning (“senhor/dono”) under any circumstance — see Section 3.2 fencing note. Established convention in Portuguese Bible tradition. |
| Ashtaroth | Transliterate — “Astarotes” | Proper name; standard convention. |
| Baal-Berith | Transliterate, with mandatory gloss — “Baal-Berite” | The component meaning (“Baal of the covenant”) must be explained in a teaching note (already specified in the glossary) rather than either silently transliterating (losing the irony) or translating outright (which would produce an unrecognizable, un-name-like phrase). |
| Shibboleth | Transliterate — “Shibolete” | Untranslatable dialectal test-word; the narrative’s point depends on it being a specific, untranslated sound. |
| Yasha/hoshia (temporal deliverance) | Paraphrase, fenced — “livrou/libertou” (never “salvou”) | See glossary; a translation-memory decision protecting the baseline’s Critical “salvação” entry from dilution. |
| Moshia (human deliverer) | Paraphrase, fenced — “libertador” (never “Salvador”) | Same rationale; Christological title reserved exclusively for God/Christ. |
| Melek (king) | Paraphrase — “rei” | Standard, unambiguous lexical equivalent; no transliteration question arises. |
5. Ranked List of This Curriculum’s Highest-Risk Ambiguities
Ranking criteria: (1) severity of doctrinal distortion if mishandled, (2) breadth/mainstream status of the colliding tradition in Brazil, (3) frequency of occurrence across the book, (4) whether the Romans baseline already anticipated any part of the risk or whether it is wholly new to this curriculum.
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“Spirit came upon / clothed / rushed upon” verb selection (3:10; 6:34; 11:29; 13:25; 14:6, 19; 15:14). Wholly new to this curriculum; directly overlaps Kardecist mediumship trance and Candomblé/Umbanda incorporação vocabulary, both mainstream, organized Brazilian religious practices. Highest severity because it recurs seven times across the book’s most memorable narratives (Samson especially) and because an untrained translator could easily reach for the most vivid, most “biblical-sounding” Portuguese verb without recognizing its ritual-possession connotation. Requires human theologian review at every occurrence, with a locked fixed-phrase decision made before Phase 2 begins.
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“Santo” as the popular Afro-Brazilian name for a possessing spirit-entity, compounding the baseline’s existing “saints” risk. New layer on a known baseline risk; severity is Critical because it could cause a reader to import possession-adjacent meaning into “santo” precisely in the passages (Spirit-empowerment narratives) where the text most needs to be read as describing the sovereign, non-ritual action of the one true God. Requires explicit avoidance strategy, not merely a teaching note.
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Baal’s literal meaning (“lord/owner”) risking confusion with the Critical-risk title “Senhor.” New to this curriculum; Judges is saturated with Baal-language in direct proximity to “SENHOR” language across nearly every apostasy cycle (2:11-13; 3:7; 6:25-32; 8:33; 10:6). Severity is high because the confusion, if it occurred, would strike at the exclusive-lordship doctrine the baseline treats as Critical for Romans 10:9. Requires the explicit fencing rule in Section 3.2 (never gloss Baal as “senhor”).
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“Libertação/libertador” collision with Latin American Liberation Theology and secular political movement vocabulary. New to this curriculum. Severity is High rather than Critical because the core translation-memory decision (never “salvou/salvação”) already substantially fences the doctrine; the residual risk is at the level of connotation (political-movement resonance) rather than direct doctrinal substitution. Requires a teaching note wherever the abstract noun “libertação” (rather than the verb) is used.
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Nazirite vow assimilated to Catholic “vida consagrada”/monastic vow categories, compounded by proximity to the Spirit-empowerment collision in Samson’s narrative (chs. 13-16). Already partly flagged in the baseline-adjacent glossary; ranked High here because of the compounding effect — two separate collision risks converge in the same four chapters. Requires the two teaching notes (Nazirite-status and Spirit-empowerment) to be taught as textually distinct, not fused.
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Jephthah’s vow (11:30-31) assimilated to folk-Catholic votive-promise devotional practice (ex-votos, promessas). High severity given the visibility and normalcy of this devotional pattern in Brazilian popular piety; the narrative’s tragic, cautionary framing could otherwise be inverted into an accidental devotional model. Requires mandatory teaching note at first occurrence.
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“Suscitou” (raised up a judge) carrying incidental resonance with recurring/reincarnated-figure language. Already flagged in the glossary as High risk; ranked here because it recurs at every judge’s introduction (2:16, 18; 3:9, 15; and implicitly throughout) and because Brazil’s Spiritist population is large enough that even a faint resonance merits explicit, not merely implicit, fencing at first occurrence.
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“Loucura vergonhosa” (nevalah, 19:23-24; 20:6, 10) risking a clinical/psychiatric misreading of “loucura.” Newly surfaced in this analysis; Medium-High severity because the narrator’s moral verdict is central to the book’s climactic argument (Moral Decline), and either a stigmatizing or a dismissive misreading would blunt that argument. Requires the clarifying teaching note specified in Section 2.
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“Juiz/juízes” importing modern courtroom-magistrate expectations onto the shophet office. Already flagged as High in the glossary; ranked Medium-High here because, unlike most of the risks above, the danger is under-dramatization (a flattened, bureaucratic reading) rather than syncretistic over-interpretation — a different failure mode requiring a different kind of teaching note (narrative/historical, not doctrinal-contrast).
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Ephod/teraphim/carved-image vocabulary overlapping Brazilian devotional material culture (medalhas, imagens, guias). Already flagged as Medium-High in the glossary; ranked here because the risk is diffuse (touches multiple objects and passages: 8:27; 17:3-5; 18:14-20) rather than concentrated in one formula, and because overcorrection (a blanket anti-imagery message) is itself a distinct pastoral risk requiring a carefully bounded teaching note.
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“Rei”/kingship’s culturally thin resonance given the absence of a living Brazilian monarchy. Medium severity; the risk here is under-impact (readers missing the urgency) rather than syncretistic distortion, and is adequately addressed by the pairing strategy in the doctrine matrix above.
6. Full-Book Chapter Coverage Confirmation
Per the full-book coverage mandate, every chapter of Judges has been reviewed for linguistic-gap and semantic-collision purposes. Chapters not separately itemized in Sections 2-5 above contributed no new terms or doctrines beyond what is already captured and are explicitly logged as reviewed below.
| Chapter | Content reviewed | New gap/collision surfaced beyond glossary (08) | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Incomplete conquest; tribal failures to drive out Canaanite inhabitants | None beyond baseline “drive_out”/“forced_labor” entries; establishes the root-cause narrative for the whole cycle | Reviewed — no new gap |
| 2 (incl. core passage 2:6-19) | Angel of the LORD at Bochim; the cycle formula introduced; “did not know the LORD”; “served”; anger kindled; relented; turned back; more corrupt | Anchor chapter for nearly all Cycle-of-Sin vocabulary; no additional gap beyond Sections 2-5 above, which draw primarily from this chapter | Reviewed — fully covered above |
| 3 | Othniel, Ehud, Shamgar; first “raised up… cried out… Spirit of the LORD” cycle instance | Confirms Rank #7 (suscitou) and Rank #1 (Spirit came upon, 3:10) risks | Reviewed |
| 4 | Deborah/Barak, Jael; “sold,” “gave into hand,” prophetess | No new gap beyond registry entries already present | Reviewed |
| 5 | Song of Deborah (poetic doxology) | Poetic register; reinforces “land had rest” (5:31); no new doctrinal-vocabulary gap — poetic praise for God’s initiative in battle, consistent with prose material | Reviewed — low new-term yield, explicitly noted rather than silently omitted |
| 6 | Gideon’s call; Angel of the LORD; “mighty man of valor” (ironic); grace/favor (chen); sign (oth); Baal altar torn down; Spirit “clothed” Gideon (6:34) | Confirms Rank #1 (labash/“clothed” verb) at its most acute instance | Reviewed |
| 7 | Gideon’s 300; trumpet; “a sword for the LORD and for Gideon” | No new gap; reinforces theme of God’s initiative over human strength | Reviewed |
| 8 | Gideon’s illegitimate ephod; refusal of kingship (“the LORD will rule over you”); Baal-Berith introduced | Confirms Rank #3 (Baal) and doctrine-matrix kingship entry | Reviewed |
| 9 | Abimelech’s illegitimate kingship; Jotham’s fable | Confirms Absence-of-a-Righteous-King doctrine-matrix entry | Reviewed |
| 10 | Renewed apostasy; expanded list of foreign gods (Baal, Astarotes, and others); “soul grieved” (qatserah naphsho) | Confirms Rank #3 fencing need at a second major cluster of Baal/Astarotes references | Reviewed |
| 11 | Jephthah; the vow; burnt offering | Confirms Rank #6 (votive-practice collision) | Reviewed |
| 12 | Shibboleth; escalating intra-Israelite violence | No new gap beyond established transliteration decision (Section 4) | Reviewed |
| 13 | Samson’s birth; Nazirite; barren; Angel of the LORD announcement; Spirit “began to stir” him (13:25) | Confirms Rank #5 (Nazirite/Spirit-empowerment compounding) | Reviewed |
| 14-15 | Samson’s marriage, riddle; Spirit “rushed upon” him (14:6, 19; 15:14); strength | Confirms Rank #1 (tsalach/“rushed upon” verb) at its most acute instances | Reviewed |
| 16 | Samson and Delilah; strength/hair; Spirit’s departure; death | Confirms “strength” (koach) magical-object fencing already in glossary; no new gap | Reviewed |
| 17 | Micah’s idols; illegitimate ephod and teraphim; “no king in Israel” refrain begins | Confirms Rank #10 (ephod/teraphim/devotional-object collision) | Reviewed |
| 18 | Danite migration; theft of Micah’s idols; corrupted priesthood | Reinforces chapter 17’s terms; no additional new gap | Reviewed |
| 19 | The Levite’s concubine; the Gibeah outrage (nevalah); “no king in Israel” | Confirms Rank #8 (loucura vergonhosa/nevalah clinical-register risk) | Reviewed |
| 20 | Civil war against Benjamin; assembly (qahal); ban/cherem invoked internally | Confirms cherem transliteration decision (Section 4) and its narrative-contextualization requirement | Reviewed |
| 21 | Vow crisis resolution; wife-capture for Benjamin; closing refrain “everyone did what was right in his own eyes” | Confirms the Critical fixed-formula requirement (Section 2, Absence-of-a-Righteous-King row) at the book’s climactic close | Reviewed |
Coverage confirmation: All 21 chapters of Judges have been reviewed. No chapter was silently omitted. Chapters 5 and 18 are explicitly logged as low-new-term-yield chapters that nonetheless reinforce previously surfaced risks rather than introducing none at all.
This document extends, and does not contradict, the Romans baseline translation_memory.json and bible_term_registry.json. All fixed-formula and translation-memory decisions referenced above are recorded in full in analysis/08_core_glossary.md and assets/bible_term_registry.json; this document supplies the linguistic-gap rationale supporting those decisions and flags residual risks for Phase 2 Step 16-17 review routing.